ScottishClubRacing.co.uk is one year old today! I can hardly believe how successful this site has become in such a short space of time, to be honest, as when myself and Mike Hogg started it, we really just expected it to be used by the small number of people who we already knew. Instead, we have had over 6000 hits in the past 12 months, and well over two and a half thousand posts on our forum, which currently has 60 members. We know of at least 20 drivers who have visited this site at some point, too, which is far more than we could ever have dreamed of a year ago, when this all began.

The idea for a website to be the online centre for Scottish club racing came about a bit over a year ago, actually, when John Findlay suggested it on the Knockhill forum, where there was a core group of maybe about a dozen of us; some fans, and some drivers, who'd talk about the racing when we had a chance. We knew there was a big lack of online coverage for the club racing, as at the time, there were really only Nick Sanderson's website and the Burnbrae XR2 team's website which were ever updated, but we were a little reluctant to take on such a big task as creating and maintaining a site ourselves, as we knew it would entail a lot of work.

After a while, however, we got to like the idea more and more, and finally decided to make a basic design for a site, on the understanding that we couldn't guarantee to be particularly fast with the updates, as we both have other commitments too. We put the site online in mid-October 2002, but due to some technical problems with the Knockhill forum, which at that point was the only meeting point for us all, we only managed to tell the world (well, the club racing fans, anyway) about the site's existence on October 26th, so that is the date we call our birthday!

	Catriona Rochford

Since then, we've grown steadily; we had a bit of a setback when a dispute between ourselves and the moderators of the Knockhill forum (no connection to Knockhill themselves) resulted in us having to create our own forum, having previously intended to link up to the Knockhill one, which we felt more people would find. However, in the end it didn't do us any long-term harm, and we've found our own forum has become very popular over the months since we started it, with people from all areas of the club racing scene involved - drivers, fans, marshalls, and team members among others. It's fantastic to see the community that's growing here, and myself and Mike have met several of the forum members at the races now, and no doubt walked past several others without knowing who they were! (Chances are a few of you are wondering who we are as well, so I've added photos of us into this article)

Beyond the forum, the main site has also grown throughout the last year, albeit more slowly - we've not always had enough time to make updates as quickly as we would like, but we've always got race reports up in the end, and usually managed to add some photos as well. One of my favourite sections of this site is the driver profiles; to begin with we only had a few, but in the summer I asked a friend to make a webform for the site, to make it easier for people to send in some information for their profiles, and that has helped a lot. I feel it adds a lot to the site if there's some way for the fans to get to know some more about the drivers they see on track, so I'm really happy to see so many of the drivers have taken the time to help us out with this - thanks to you all! S.M.A.R.T. Timing have also been a big help to us, as they agreed to let us link directly to their results pages on their website, which has saved us a lot of time and effort in typing up results, believe me!

Mike Hogg

During the summer, I worked on a minor redesign of the original site, with some changes to the colours, and so it reached the design it currently uses. This was also a time for me to catch up on all the things I'd meant to do but hadn't found the time for, so towards the end of the year the website was at it's best, which was good, as it was getting more and more popular. Several of the XR2 drivers carry stickers on their cars advertising the site, which helps people to find us a bit more (many thanks to Neil Scott for organising those!), and in August, our forum member Dave Fiddes had a letter published in the SMRC magazine, Wheelspin, which gave the address for our site. This advertising, together with general word of mouth, has meant that we now average 150-200 hits per week, even in weeks when there is no race, which is quite amazing, considering our small beginnings.

From a personal viewpoint, I'm really glad to be involved in ScottishClubRacing.co.uk - getting to know so many other people from the club racing world has really added to the fun of going to the races, as I now have someone to support in virtually every series, and I've got to know far more about all the behind the scenes activity. Being able to talk to some of the drivers during a meeting is a great way to keep up with what's happening to everyone, and it's always great to see some of the drivers we know doing well. The highlight of the last year for me has to be Lance Gauld getting his first Legends win on September 14th, after getting faster and faster all season: that was also the first win for one of the drivers who takes part in our forum who wasn't already a winner when he joined us (we also have Alan Kirkaldy on the forum, but he was a multiple Formula Ford race winner long before we got to know him!)

Another highlight was seeing Nick Sanderson leading a couple of XR2 races towards the start of the season, although sadly the luck just never seemed to be there for him, and it was a big disappointment to see both him and John Findlay ending their seasons in a big accident on September 14th. Hopefully things will go better for them both next year, and we'll see more of "our" drivers working their way up and getting some good results.

Thanks to everyone who's been a part of ScottishClubRacing.co.uk in the last year - you guys have made this site what it is now. Here's to many more years for us!